Meeting Needs vs. Changing Behavior

We discussed the importance of active parenting. How it's important as a parent to address the NEEDS of a child, rather than the BEHAVIOR. Behavior is a result of needs. Brother Williams gave a very interesting perspective on parenting I hadn't really thought of before. He said can you imagine having your vulnerable child that you love so much handed to someone else to take of? He was relating it to Heavenly Father and how He entrusts us to watch and take care of His children. So we need to do the best we can because we're just taking care of them for the time being.

When we parent it's important to realize that we don't know enough. Even if you "believe" a certain way, in the end you should really always be striving to do what's best by the Lord. We need to follow His guidance. It's important when we parent that even if we feel a certain thing needs to be carried out, we should first ask the Lord in prayer if this is right because He knows best. Not to mention, He's the perfect parent.

Have you ever met a child that is so annoying you have no idea how to handle them? Have you ever considered that the reason they are so annoying is because they have needs that aren't getting met so they're acting a certain way to try to meet those needs themselves? Many times when kids are really obnoxious, it is due to undue attention seeking. They're being that way because they don't know how else to get the attention they crave. In this scenario it's important to not just focus on the behavior. It's important to realize that maybe they need something and that's the reason for the behavior. Brother Williams gave an example of a boy who would chew on his shirts. No matter what his mom did for punishment for this, he would always chew on the collar of his shirt. Finally she took him to a doctor to see what the problem could be and he couldn't find anything wrong, but he suggested giving the boy bananas every day. In a couple days the boy stopped chewing on his shirt. The reason for this is because he was lacking potassium. He didn't know why he chewed on his shirt, just that he couldn't help but do it. Laundry detergent has trace amounts of potassium in it and so he was getting as much as he could. Once he started eating bananas however, he stopped chewing. His need was met and he was fine. The mom was focusing on the behavior that she didn't want him doing, rather than trying to meet a need.

Elder Groberg said, "You can never get enough of what you don't need, because what you don't need cannot satisfy you."

This makes me think of poor food choices.Sometimes I'll just sit and eat a whole bunch of hot cheetos and it seems I never get full of them because they're not satisfying a need of mine. They're not nutritious or in anyway helpful to my growing, but I keep eating them because I want them to fill me up or satisfy me, but they won't. I'll end up eating a whole bunch and then find myself needing to eat something more.

Brother Williams knew this hyperactive kid who would always touch people and get in your face and was just really obnoxious to most people so that people would try to avoid him. After some thinking, Brother Williams decided to give him what he needed. Instead of waiting for the "attack" he would approach the young kid and be super friendly. He'd basically do what the kid was doing. He'd be right there, and touch his arm and interact with him like the kid was interacting with everyone else. The kid eventually calmed down enough and didn't annoy people anymore. It was because his need was met. He just wanted attention and contact with people but didn't know how to get it without being annoying. Once he was getting attention and contact, he calmed down and was fine. It makes me think of little kids who will repeat the bad behavior, because any attention is good attention.

Teenage sex a lot of the time is because of a need for contact and belonging from someone. However, it's not satisfying enough because they're still not getting what they really need. A very interesting study has shown that dad's who hug their daughters makes them less permiscuous. They're not out looking for bad attention for contact and belonging from someone else because they are getting the feeling of belonging and love at home.

It's important to teach your kids to contribute. Typically you don't feel connected or belonging with someone if you aren't contributing. For example, if you were at a friends house and they wouldn't let you help with anything and just wanted you to sit there and watch a movie while everyone else cleans. Do you feel a part? Or do you feel more like a guest and uncomfortable? It's the same with a sports team or young women's for example. If you show up to games, but are just standing there and aren't helping to score or work a little, do you feel you've bonded with the team and a part? Probably not.

When you're dealing with kids it's important to treat them with just as much respect as you would anyone else. Brother Williams gave an example where he was in charge of an all boys group home. It was just him and 35 other boys that he had to be in charge of. These were kids where they were so bad they weren't allowed to live at home anymore. Well he made it a point that when he'd come to work he would bond with them. He would talk to them and treat them politely. Then when it came to working with them, it was simple because they were shown the respect they deserved. On the other hand, he had colleagues who were working with other groups of boys and they had severe problems. The boys were always getting out of hand and they'd have to wrestle them down or something. Brother Williams was meeting the needs of his boys.

An interesting thing was pointed out. When you have a child with a mental illness, you're not supposed to treat them differently than your other kids. Of course sometimes adjustments have to be made, but overall they should be treated as normal as possible because that's how they learn what normal is. A girl in class pointed out how she knew someone who had an autistic kid. They had other kids as well, but the autistic kid was treated much differently than the others. Since the other kids weren't getting the same type of attention, a lot of them started to exhibit autistic behavior so they would get more attention. It doesn't have to be necessarily a mental illness either. Kids will act however they feel will get them what they need. Needs are SO important when parenting and it's not about a change in behavior, it's about addressing a need.. which WILL change a behavior.

Staying Home

This week was a little cut short because of Thanksgiving, but we had to read an article about homemaking and if it makes you dumber or is mind-numbing to stay at home instead of "experiencing" the world. It kind of bothered me that women's rights are saying how it's mind-numbing for women to stay home when they should be out having careers in the world. The most important thing you can do in your life is to bear children and raise them. I think you can learn so much from staying at home with your children. They are so curious about the world and ask so many questions you would have never thought of. Their perspective is so different I think you can learn new things every day. I learn so much from my little girl. I know some families need both parents to go to work to make ends meet and that's fine. You can keep up with the world and learn new things and still stay at home. Plus just because you're in a career doesn't mean your job allows it so you can be learning new things all day, you're probably just doing the same mind-numbing things at work.

However, it is important to pursue your education I feel because you can help teach your children.

Communication

This week we discussed the topic of communication. How it is so important to be able to communicate effectively. In the beginning of class our teacher had an object lesson. He had us take a "pop" quiz but all of the questions were written in Danish. He wanted us to answer the questions, even though none of us knew how to speak it. Some of us were able to kind of guess what was being meant just by the words themselves. He then went on to explain how in communication sometimes we can infer what we are hearing, but that doesn't necessarily mean we know what is being said. When you are communicating there are three things; Tone, words, non-verbal. They don't even all of the time relate. For example, you can be saying something that's pleasant, but your tone in how you say it can come off unpleasant. That's how sarcasm is. What you're saying doesn't always mean the same thing if you inflect a certain tone or body language with it.

President Harold B. Lee said that we need to communicate so we can't be misunderstood, not just so we can be understood. This was really profound to me because sometimes you feel like what you're saying makes perfect sense, but someone else could be decoding it differently. Decoding is the biggest problem in relationships. Brother Williams gave a little diagram to help us see this visually. We have our thoughts/feelings and based off of how we feel we encode some type of message. Then the other person then has to decode what we've just said and gets thoughts/feelings based on what they think was said. In other words the person you are talking to could be decoding what you're saying MUCH differently than you were intending.

He gave an example of a husband and wife he knew. They were having marital problems because she felt like he was cheating on her or wasn't completely honest with her. She thought this because she would hear from her friends (who happened to be attractive) how funny her husband was because they ran into each other in the grocery store. She thought he was flirting with other women because he had never told her the stories of seeing these women in the stores so she felt he was trying to hide it from her. In actuality, he didn't tell her he'd see the women because he knew his wife felt insecure and he was trying the whole time to get away from talking with them anyway so that his wife wouldn't get upset. He loved his wife so much that he didn't want her to feel insecure so he wouldn't say anything, and when she would find out she felt betrayed because she felt he was trying to hide things from her. She was decoding what he was doing as being sneaky, when that wasn't what he was doing.They were both trying to solve a problem, but unless they have good communication and a shared meaning then it can just create conflict.

It's important to not only have good communication, but to understand a shared meaning. Teaching better communication skills to couples in the short run worked, but in the long run was actually detrimental because they can still misunderstand each other. Unless you both are on the same wave length and really understand each other, relationships won't improve by just better communication.

Family Stressors/Crisis

This week was about stresses and crises in the family, and how you respond to them. There's a model called the ABCX and it breaks down a stress in a way. This is how Brother Williams presented it to us. A=the actual (stressor) event. B= both resources and reactions. C= cognitions and X= the total experience. We talked about how what you think about your situation has in large to due with what you get from the experience. Usually people will say that events trigger your emotions, but in actuality, events trigger your thoughts which trigger your emotions.  There is a saying which I'm going to totally butcher, but in essence it says how nobody (or event) can make you feel a certain way. We choose how we respond. We tend to be aware of things consistent with our emotional state. He gave the example of watching a scary movie. After a scary movie you come home and all of the sudden you hear little noises in your house and freak yourself out even more. When actually your house probably makes those noises all of the time, you are just more aware of those noises now.

Families that are strong typically do better in high stress situations. They do well because typically there is more communication, there is cohesion, flexibility, and resilience. Families that aren't that strong will typically fall apart after a huge crisis instead of come together. Families need to be flexible at times. We had the example of spatulas. There are the ones you use for flipping eggs lets say, and then the rubber spatulas you use. The one you use for eggs is pretty useless in scraping out a bowl for example because it's not flexible. I feel like there needs to be more of an effort in every family to be flexible with each other. More fights are prevented when a family can be flexible. The excuse of you need to act a certain way with someone because "that's just how they are" is a poor excuse because in order for a family to really be strong then EVERYONE needs to be willing to bend at some point. Not saying at all that you should just go with the flow of everything and not have an opinion, but it's important for there to be leeway between people instead of one person always catering to the other.

Physical Intimacy

This week we talked about physical intimacy in class. I'm not going to go into details all about this, but I did want to touch on a few things. Men and women are wired differently when it comes to arousal and so it was said how before marriage you are taught that you need to have self control. Well this is a really important thing to learn for after marriage to. That sounds wrong, but it's true because since men and women get aroused differently you have to be willing to have self control of your desires so you can both feel pleasure. Marriage takes a lot of selfish behavior away, if you are happy. I don't think you can be genuinely happy in a marriage without being selfless and always wanting what's best for your spouse. If you're still really selfish in your marriage I guarantee your spouse isn't as happy. 

There's a circle. It's interesting because women tend to need safety and security before they can be physically intimate while men need sex in order to feel secure and safe. My teacher pointed out that a lot of times girls think guys only think about sex and that's all they want, but it can be true that guys want sex in order to feel close to their spouse and since it's different for girls it can get complicated at times. The most important sex organ is your brain. If you don't feel good in your brain you can't have a satisfying experience.

Marriage & Babies

This week we went over marriages and introducing kids into your life. Right around where Michael and I are in our life right now so of course it really intrigued me. We were talking about the advantages and disadvantages to marrying young especially because it happens frequently in the Latter-Day Saint culture. Some advantages we came up with is when you marry young you have more of a mate selection and you're also able to have more children more often. The younger you get married the more opportunity you have to have children. Disadvantages is that some people get confused maybe with the misattribution of love or something and commit too early without thinking it through. You also don't get to know as many people because you're not out dating for years, you already have found your partner. I think overall though, it's more of an advantage to marry young. People who marry closer to age 30 have a harder time when they do find a mate because they have been set in their ways for so long. Plus, when you have kids early on, you rely on each other more. You are both growing up together and setting a routine together and so you can grow closer together because you're both experiencing life changes. When you marry older you have to work a little harder to get a routine together and you've already potentially gone through life changes by yourself rather than a bonding moment with someone else.

LDS people usually think about marriage at the first date. That's not true for everyone, but it is typically true because you marry who you date and marriage and family are really important in our religion. My teacher pointed out that in Denmark you just hang out and you don't start dating until around your 30's because that's when they consider marriage. Well someone pointed out that a downside to LDS people thinking about marriage on the first date is that you could decide to not even try to go on a date with someone because they're not "your type". Think about all of the people you could meet that maybe would be good for you, but if you are thinking right from the beginning "Well I would never marry someone who looked like that" then maybe you could miss out on something great. In a way it's judging a book by it's cover.

Another thing we talked about was how marital satisfaction statistically decreases DRAMATICALLY once a baby is born. There are ways to help keep from this. It is SO important to go on dates all of the time. A lot of couples stop going on dates during pregnancy even because the wife feels lousy, and then after the baby is born is even more. It's so important though because dates are your time alone to be with your spouse and that is SO important. It's also really important to involve your husband in everything even if he doesn't seem to care. It will help him feel bonded with the baby during and after. I had Michael going to almost all of my appointments when I was pregnant with Adalynne and although sometimes he felt it was pointless, I think it really helped him to feel a part. He was saying how important it is to have a bonding experience as a new family and sometimes other family members can inhibit that. I remember when I had my daughter I felt like I really lost out on an opportunity with her and didn't get to bond with her like I should have. Mainly because almost right after I had her everyone came in the room to see her. That's not necessarily bad because I know everyone was excited but after all it was my new family and I didn't just get to sit and hold my new baby and stare and smile at her. Right away it felt she was handed off and I just had to watch everyone else hold her. It will be different with my next. I want to make sure I bond with her like I didn't get to with my first. I'm not doing it to be mean either, I'm doing it so I can feel secure in my relationship with my baby and grow with my family. I don't think Michael and I have had a decrease in marital satisfaction because mainly when we had Adalynne we made it a point to still do things together and date often. Mainly because we lived with family for the first 8 months and so we could go out whenever, and also because he has always been the most helpful husband ever.

Dating

This week was all about dating and love. I found it very interesting when we dove into what actual love meant, it's different than you typically think. Love has four different meanings in Greek. Agape, Philios, Eros, and Storge. Agape is general love you feel for others. Charity and the like. Philios is brotherly love. There doesn't have to be romance or anything. Eros is the typical one most people think of which is passionate or romantic love. Storge is parent-child love. All of these are different and unique in their own ways, but you can't just have one. It's important to have Eros, but passion doesn't last your whole life and you need to have a foundation of Agape and Philios for your partner also.

There are three "P"s to dating. Planned, paid for, paired off. In order for it to be considered a date and not just hanging out, there has to be a plan of some sort, you should be having someone pay for the date (not necessarily the guy but most often than not) and paired off. There should be a distinction when you're out that you two are together for the night. After you get married the three "P"s kind of go along with the three in the Proclamation. Preside, provide, protect. You make think this a stretch but it really does correlate. Presiding can be like planning because in order for a husband to preside and be there then he has to have a plan. Paid for and provide go together because when you're dating it's nice to know that you're taken care of because the date will pay for the movie or dinner for the two of you and it lets you know that if you were to marry them they would be able to provide for you because they have made it a point to pay for you when you're dating. Paired off and protect go together because when you're paired off you are essentially saying that this is my girl and I'm with this person which makes the girl feel protected. I thought it was really cool how these matched up and how you really can get to know a lot about the person you want to marry by the people you date. I mean if you were to date someone who never paid or who was always borrowing money, you don't think of him as a hard worker or someone who wants to take care of you. Likewise if they can't even plan an actual date, how will they make decisions when it comes to presiding over you and your family? My teacher made an interesting remark he said to date around because if you don't then you date to hate. If you don't date a bunch of different people casually, then you don't know what kind of spouse you want and you end up hating the person you're with because you paired off too soon. It makes perfect sense to me. It's only when you're ready and you know what you want in a spouse that you can date just one person exclusively so that you prepare to marry them.

There are however some things to look out for. You can get a misattribution of arousal. When I heard this I thought.. interesting... but then the more it was explained the clearer it became. They have done studies where if your heart rate is up and breathing then it triggers the response of attractiveness and love even if you don't love that person. It can happen when you're working out because you're sitting there breathing heavy and heart rate is up so you tend to find the person you're working out next to more attractive. It's a good explanation for why guys like to take girls to scary movies and on roller coasters because that's exactly what happens. They did a study where they had a girl rate the attractiveness of a guy before they got on a roller coaster together and then rate him after, and every time the guy was rated more attractive after the exhilarating ride. It typically works most dramatically when you don't know the person beforehand, but still has an effect with someone you're seeing or with. It's a pretty good explanation for girls liking bad boys. Since they invoke danger and a little bit of fear, it gets the heart rate up and you feel aroused. This can be dangerous though because you may feel like you love someone because of your brain tricking you, and then find out later you don't.

It can happen with spiritual things also. The Prophets have said to not have dates at the Temple or places of similar spiritualness because you can be mistaking the good feelings of the Spirit, for feelings of love.

In reading an article about dating and hooking up and marriage he says, "be a little more proactive and seek someone you like, someone who is worthy, and someone who inspires you to be a better person. The Spirit will guide you but won't do the courting or make the choice for you." He's saying this in relation to girls waiting around for the perfect glass slipper to come and be put on her foot. ("Hanging Out, Hooking up, and Celestial Marriage" by Bruce A. Chadwick.)